Month: December 2015

Not everyone in the Opposition was convinced that with the October 7 elections the political chapter was to be closed for another six-year presidential period. There had been a sustained skepticism surrounding Hugo Chavez and his true health condition, although some also were persuaded that it had been a well-conceived act put to exploit the[…]

II There were not few in the Opposition who considered Capriles attitude as cowardly and it became a cause of friction among the MUD. There was an increasing sentiment among a more radical segment of the Opposition that Capriles‘ behavior was leading to some sort of recognition of Maduro‘s victory at the polls. It also[…]

I I have lost count of the number of times I have written about Venezuela being in turmoil. As for now, it is something that we have learned to live with, and when violence gets out of control, you just try to find ways to evade the effects. Only, this time it seems it‘s[…]

Much of the talk about Venezuela for the past fourteen years has been, no doubt about it, Hugo Chavez. Before that, maybe baseball and beautiful women winning beauty pageants made it to the headlines, but not with the same frequency as this political phenomenon, that not many might predicted but as he appeared decided to[…]

If Chavez was authoritarian, he was careful enough to appear as a democratic authoritarian. His political project, the Bolivarian Revolution, has shown quite a lot of undemocratic principles, but all of them under the “participatory democracy“ means: each time a chavista candidate lost an election, the President would name a chavista as a sort of[…]

It is becoming increasingly difficult to explain that among the divide between Venezuelans, the characterization of chavistas and opposition does not represent the diversity of the conflicts that unease the political spectrum of the country these days. That wouldn‘t be a problem if it weren‘t for the hostility, when not the aggression, one is supposed[…]